Guitar Tablature: "Mozart’s Motif"

"Mozart's Motif" is an arpeggio exercise that's drawn from his Piano Sonata No. 1 in C Major. What’s interesting here is that when you play "Mozart's Motif" on guitar, you have the chance to use sequences in two ways. Notice the smaller, descending two-note sequences that progress upward by chord tones to the octave, and you'll also notice the longer one-bar sequences (ten notes total) that occur between the measures. Mozart was really good with structure this way, so you can find elegant examples like this all through his music. Note that bar 7 has a major arpeggio, which leads nicely into the final bar.

For this piece, you use minor arpeggio patterns #1 and #3, and even though #1 normally starts on the 6th string and #4 starts on the 5th, here they both play the exact same string sequence (4-5-3-4-2-3-1-2-3-4). So the piece is a good memory test of your arpeggio patterns, both major and minor. Make sure you can play those major arpeggios as confidently as you can your freshly mastered minor arpeggios.

Pieces composed of arpeggios are often played legato. Just don’t let the notes ring through the rests that follow the sequences. Those last notes should be played short and crisp, according to the written rhythm.